Is Kiev Headhunting for Georgian and American Mercenaries in Ukraine?

It is not hard to read between the lines of recent news articles in the Georgian press about so-called Georgian fighters in Ukraine fighting on the side of Kiev. Apparently a cleanup operation is going on, not to eliminate the alleged pro-Moscow “separatists” in the East of the country but with some elements within the ranks of those who came to fight in Ukraine—on the side of Kiev.

Along with former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, they entered Ukraine to get another go at the Russians, closer to their home territory. Their presence there has nothing to do with Ukraine itself. The cleanup operation is a reflection of Georgian internal politics and overall US plans for the region, which Ukraine can do without being the theatre for.

Set up to be taken out

We are told by the above-mentioned Georgian link that a number of troops walked straight into an ambush, and that their Ukrainian commanders set them up to be eliminated by the separatists. This would be entirely consistent with previous developments in this story, as it is not new. We have been following it since 2014, and NEO and Veterans today were the first to report on the nexus between the indiscriminate murders in Maidan and Georgian-trained snipers, who mysteriously moved from Maidan Square to Syria, as if they would be interested in that conflict, on fake Georgian passports.

Those links were established, with supporting evidence, even before Gian Micalessin‏, an Italian journalist, claimed to have first broken the story. The lid had already been blown off through contact with Georgian army personnel who had been involved in training those snipers, and even one of the Maidan snipers himself. As Jim Dean of Veterans Today wrote, Micalessin’s story merely confirmed VT’s earlier reports of how outside mercenaries had been brought in to shoot up both demonstrators and security police in a classic Cold War psyop.

There has long been a practice of governments paying snipers to shoot people indiscriminately in Eastern Europe. Prior to August 2008, before the Georgian-Russian war, snipers operating in Georgia (some of whom were the same people), who had been trained by a US contractor, Archangel, were employed to kill civilians in South Ossetia. The important thing to remember is that “Often the people who do these whack jobs are “disappeared” afterwards to tidy up the official version of the event”. This explains what almost went down in Ukraine.

Ambush also a US operation

If these troops were set up by their own commanders, having been imported there by the US to begin with, that makes the ambush also a US operation. When such operations are alleged elsewhere we always find individual Americans suddenly appearing in ill-defined “support roles” and getting out after the dirty deed has been done. This is exactly what has happened in this case too, as we can identify at least two of these mysterious figures who suddenly took an interest in Ukraine.

There is a very big nexus with the “soldier of fortune” John Giduck, who claims to be a second generation Ukrainian-American who has travelled, worked and studied extensively in Russia and the former Soviet Union for almost twenty years. Many of his stories and tall tales have been debunked in recent years; much of his CV has been demonstrated to be faked, despite the high powered spin offered by some who are part of such schemes in response to the respected Washington Monthly in its March/April 2011 issue. But though various groups have proved Giduck a con-artist, he keeps showing up in places associated with the shedding of innocent blood, as in Georgia and Beslan, and this may be more than coincidence.

We should also notice the activities of a certain Brian Christopher Boyenger, who claims to be a former American paratrooper, joined the Ukrainian army’s Georgian National Legion and took part in active combat missions in the war-torn Donbass Region. As an Italian Journalist wrote,

“A few days before the Maidan massacre, Mamulashvili presented to the selected shooters a guy in uniform … he introduced him and told us he was an instructor, an American soldier. The US military man is called Brian Christopher Boyenger, a former officer and shooter of the 101st Airborne Division. “We were always in touch with this Brian – he was Mamulashvili’s man. It was he who gave us the orders; I had to follow all his instructions.””

An article in the US-controlled English language press in Georgia also describes Boyenger as a retired officer and former sniper from the US Army’s elite 101st Airborne Division, and further claims that he is the first US citizen to formally join the Ukrainian military in an official combat role since hostilities broke out against Russian forces and their ‘separatist proxies’ in April 2014.

Nor is the ambush the only strange involving Georgian troops in Ukraine. It has been reported that Georgian volunteers who have been fighting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014 have accused their commander of betrayal and abandoned the brigade they belonged to in the Ukrainian military.

“All but three of approximately 40 Georgian volunteers have walked away from the Foreign Brigade of Ukraine’s Armed Forces … and now “vow not to leave the war zone but instead merge with some other military unit,” said commander of the Georgian Legion Mamuka Mamulashvili.

Knowing your enemy

The infamous Mamuka Mamulashvili is a story in himself, which has been well documented. It involves Georgian snipers, the Georgian Brigade, and a bunch of CIA-sponsored hired killers who have attached themselves to him in some way. NEO partner organisation Veterans Today has even contacted Mamulashvili, giving him an opportunity to respond to an earlier article about him and the activities of Georgians in Ukraine, but not received a response, unsurprisingly.

It is not difficult to discover Mamulashvili’s history. One just needs to look at all the US and NATO-sponsored media outlets which write positive stories about him and how he got to Ukraine, where these stories are published and where they are not, and it becomes possible to build a picture of who his friends really are.

There is also the issue of where he gets his money from. As an irregular, Mamulashvili is not paid by the regular Ukrainian army, but nor is there any evidence that he has been hired as a mercenary, a paid combatant receiving a salary. As a volunteer soldier, he has to meet his own expenses, or get someone else to do that for him.

In Georgia Mamulashvili was not independently wealthy. Before going to Ukraine he worked for the Ministry of Defence as a paid advisor to Irakli Alasania. We know from previous press reports and documents this is the person the US wanted to take control in Georgia after Saakashvili crashed and burned, at least before Bidzina Ivanishvili became available.

But as the new government’s first Defence Minister, Alasania fired Mamulashvili and 30 other veterans during a so-called “reorganisation process” connected with either cleansing the department of the many involved in criminal procurements or bringing in new people whose pockets the minister wanted to line through another set of criminal procurements, depending on your point of view.

Mamulashvili has said publicly that he was not removed due to any reorganisation but because he was politically active. It is true that Alasania was not one to tolerate those he saw as threats, especially from within his own rank and file, so this is credible. However if we accept Mamulashvili’s own story, he was removed specifically for having connections with former president Saakashvili, and political and career objectives of his own which were somehow linked with Saakashvili.

If this is so, Mamulashvili is being paid by Saakashvili, or the tooth fairy, and supported by his media team. This in turn means that he is on the payroll of the Americans, as Saakashvili and the other wanted Georgians who were spirited to Ukraine made no secret of being on someone’s payroll.

Mamulashvili’s media connections clearly link him to the US Embassy, and to a team of foreign nationals based in Georgia who provide media support for the regime in Kiev – Vice News, VOA, former Peace Corp Volunteers and others working under the guise of running language clubs in Tbilisi and working for various NGOs.

Study in Scarlet – Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson

Their names and connections are well known: Richard Delong, who was giving interviews with various German media outlets about Euromaidan, and had bragged about how some of his statements may end up in the film they are working on, and a French National, Remi Boissonnas, who is claimed to be the mastermind behind the Tbilisi cell that was involved with much of what transpired in Kiev and providing covering media support under the guise of Language Exchange Club Tbilisi, who were involved with Language Exchange Club Kiev, during the Putsch.

One member, the guitarist among this groups is perhaps a Mormon [well, he studied at their Brigham Young university in Utah] and he is VERY interested in Russian, linguistics, and his politics of Euromaidan, often quoted Saakashvili when he wrote to his friends. “The people with you tonight are from the inner circle of Saakashvili and his team.”

We should remember that not that long ago there were plans for a pro-Saakashvili coup in Georgia, which was stopped thanks to friends in Turkish intelligence and the efforts of Veterans Today.

Knowing your friends and your enemies

What has transpired in Ukraine is a threat to Ukrainian, Georgian, Russian and US national security, and for that matter, everybody else’s, but it has taken since 2014 for the full story to develop, even the extent of US involvement in these murders.

It is now clear, at least in retrospect, that Georgia should never have allowed its nationals to engage in Ukraine, a BIG mistake. However, it was an avoidable one. Those associated with Saakashvili’s rebels (boeviki) have actually been blessed until recently by the present Georgian government, which has always supported the Poroshenko regime in Kiev.

We know this because the US Embassy and State Department have approved of their activities, supported them financially and provided them with the necessary military hardware. Even if the Georgian government did not want this to happen, it wouldn’t have had a choice. This also explains how a number of young Georgians who didn’t have passports suddenly ended up fighting in Ukraine or Syria, and their families were told that the identity if the person who gave them their passport was classified.

Many of the individuals involved in supporting this conflict, they are complicit in the murders of these Georgian soldiers, worked in Kiev prior to being relocated to Tbilisi, and still move back and forth on a regular basis. It is easy to track them via their social media postings, Facebook, and those who know them personally. Not only the CIA uses Facebook and fake accounts.

As Jim Dean of Veterans Today best sums it up, “as for volunteers fighting in other people’s wars … most of them were like mercenaries everywhere, are in it for the thrill, the money, and stories to tell when [they] get home.” But a group of these volunteers have now found out the hard way that hard politics is a bigger driving factor in the Ukraine conflict, and the installation of the Kiev government, than any grievance anyone might have had which could lead to war.

It is easy to see why Georgians might want to fight in Ukraine, paid or not. Russia was seen by some of them as the common enemy, and the Poroshenko regime was presented as the popular response to alleged Russian attempts to dominate Ukraine through Yanukovych. The fact that Ukrainians themselves twice elected Yanukovych, and twice outside forces intervened to remove him, was not important. Georgians don’t place much credence in the results of elections, and with good reason given what they have seen back home.

But Georgian volunteers can’t act as individuals in the service of an army. They are integral parts of a political scheme, and that is something that we are not supposed to be able to connect. It is clear that many of them have bitter memories themselves of from Saakashvili’s years of misrule and terror. Kiev at first may not have cared who was running their units, or why, but they do now. Hopefully Georgia as a nation will too realise it has to act differently, times have changed, and it too must try to extricate itself from sending its own citizens to be murdered by their own comrades fighting in a conflict which doesn’t help Georgia in the least.

Electronic analytical journal New Eastern Outlook 2010-2018Republishing of the articles is welcomed with reference to NEO.The views of the authors do not necessarily coincide with the opinion of the editorial board.